Most people eat food that has many additives such as artifical food coloring, artificial flavoring, preservatives, hydrogenated oils, and a lot of corn syrup. None of these were used a couple of generations ago. It is actually hard to find any "regular" food without these additives. Even when I was a kid (in the 50s) most food I ate at home was cooked at home. Not so any more.
Often when we shop, I look at other peoples' carts and compare the contents to our cart. Our cart contains ingredients like flour, milk, vegetable and fruit produce, butter, raw beans, plain oatmeal (not the instant flavored kind), cheese, and that's about it. Often other carts don't have one natural ingredient. All either cans, packages, microwaveable this and that, every bit of it pre-prepared.
I don't doubt that this has something to do with childrens' allergies. The body can only take so much garbage without some kind of symptom.
The fewer boxes and cans that fill my garbage can at home, the better. Most of my neighbors (only one has kids) have full garbage cans on garbage day, but I usually put my cans out every two weeks unless there's something particularly stinky in there. Most of these households are one or two folks. How the heck can they generate so much garbage especially when they're mostly men. (Yes, women tend to generate more garbage at home - go ahead flame away). My only conclusion is that they all buy a bunch of stuff in boxes and cans from the grocery.